Union of BC Indian Chiefs calls for Coastal GasLink to halt work to reduce COVID-19 threat.
Amanda Follett Hosgood is the Tyee’s northern BC reporter. She lives amidst the stunning mountains and rivers of Wet’suwet’en territory. Find her on Twitter @amandajfollett.
Governments and bosses claim to be at war with coronavirus. In reality, it is a war against our social class that they are waging. A war against us for their profits!
Everything feels new, unbelievable, overwhelming. At the same time, it feels as if we’ve walked into an old recurring dream. In a way, we have. We’ve seen it before, on TV and in blockbusters. We knew roughly what it would be like, and somehow this makes the encounter not less strange, but more so.
In the 1980s, US hospitals began to transform from institutions providing comprehensive care, no matter how long it took, to healthcare factories intent on shuffling patients in and out as quickly as possible. While this was meant to save money, shortages of basic equipment during the coronavirus outbreak have revealed the high price of these cost-cutting measures.
B.C. First Nations leaders are urging the provincial and federal governments to shut down construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline in northern B.C. during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu, B.C. Premier John Horgan, and provincial Health Minister Adrian Dix, the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs says continued construction on the controversial project is increasing the risk of transmission
Trans Mountain says it’s adhering to social-distancing protocols, even as photos emerge appearing to show workers on site within two metres of one another.
In the face of the COVID-19 tsunami, our lives are changing in ways that were inconceivable just a few short weeks ago. Not since the 2008-09 economic collapse has the world collectively shared an experience of this kind: a single, rapidly-mutating, global crisis, structuring the rhythm of our daily lives within a complex calculus of risk and competing probabilities.
